Gerry Alexander

Gerry Alexander, the cricketer, who has died aged 82, was the last white man
to captain the West Indies.

5:37PM BST 19 Apr 2011

This put him in an invidious position, as critics complained that first his place as wicket keeper in the West Indian team, and then his appointment as skipper, had been governed by racist considerations. Nevertheless, through determination, character and sheer decency Alexander eventually proved an inspired selection both as cricketer and as captain.

Tom Graveney batting for England, with Alexander behind the stumps and Walcott at slip

Franz Copeland Murray Alexander, always known as Gerry, was born on November 2 1928 in Kingston, Jamaica. He attended Wolmer’s Boys School, a foundation which, dating back to 1729, is one of the oldest educational institutions in the English-speaking Caribbean. He then went up to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he soon proved his sporting prowess. A soccer Blue, he went on to win an England amateur cap and an FA Amateur Cup winner’s medal.

In cricket Alexander was for two seasons (1952 and 1953) the university’s wicket keeper; in both years he averaged over 30 with the bat. In 1952 the Cambridge side contained four Test players — David Sheppard, Peter May, John Warr and the South African Cuan McCarthy — but were unable to force a win at Lord’s.

In 1953, with a theoretically weaker side, the Light Blues triumphed over Oxford by two wickets. Alexander played a key role, top-scoring with 31 in the first innings, and — notwithstanding an injured hand — taking a catch to dismiss Colin Cowdrey for a duck in the second innings.

In 1954 and 1955 Alexander turned out for Cambridgeshire. Back in the West Indies, in 1957 he was picked for the team to tour England on the strength of his performance in a trial match, in which he shared a ninth wicket stand of 134 with the young Wes Hall.

He had, though, played only twice for Jamaica, against the Duke of Norfolk’s XI. His detractors reckoned that there were better wicket keepers on the island, such as Alfred Binns and Jackie Hendriks, not to mention Andy Ganteaume in Trinidad, Clifford McWatt in British Guiana, and Clairmonte Depeiza in Barbados.

In England, Alexander at first seemed out of his depth when keeping to the spinners, having especial trouble in “reading” Sonny Ramadhin. For the first three Tests Rohan Kanhai was preferred behind the stumps. Alexander, however, made his international debut in the fourth game at Headingley.

By that time the morale of the West Indies team had collapsed, and both the Headingley and the Oval Tests were lost inside three days. With the retirement of John Goddard, there was a desperate need for a new skipper to restore the team’s fortunes.

For the first time the selectors seemed prepared to consider a black captain. Frank Worrell, however, declined the job on account of his studies in Economics at Manchester University. Somehow Everton Weekes and Clyde Walcott, both great senior players, were considered unsuitable. Instead the selectors turned to Gerry Alexander, whose wicket keeping seemed unreliable, and whose Test scores had been 0 not out, 11, 0 and 0.

Yet through patience, skill and encouragement, Alexander succeeded in forging the array of talent in the West Indies side into a coherent and successful team.

In 1958, in the home series against Pakistan, he led them to victory by three Tests to one. Moreover, he seemed far more competent behind the stumps when keeping to fast bowlers on hard wickets, than he had appeared when faced with the puzzle of Ramadhin and Valentine in England. Alexander also performed better with the bat against Pakistan, not least with a critical 57 in the second innings of the second Test in Trinidad.

On the tour of India in 1958-59 the West Indies were for the first time since the war without all of the “three Ws”: Worrell, Weekes and Walcott. Nevertheless, Alexander’s team succeeded in winning three Tests and drawing the other two. On the one occasion that the West Indies seemed in trouble, against the leg-spin of Subhash Gupte in the second Test at Kanpur, the captain saved the situation with a fighting innings of 70.

Crucial to the West Indies’ success was the performance of two new fast bowlers, Roy Gilchrist and Wes Hall. Gilchrist, however, was a loose cannon, who seemed to bear special animus against the captain, a fellow Jamaican, albeit vastly more privileged.

On the other side, Alexander deprecated Gilchrist’s tendency, when angry or frustrated, to bowl highly dangerous beamers. During the Test series these antipathies were with some difficulty kept in check.

Against North Zone in the last match of the tour of India, however, Gilchrist unleashed murderous beamers against a batsman called Swaranjit Singh, whom Alexander had known at Cambridge. The captain’s order that Gilchrist should immediately cease this vicious form of attack was ignored.

At the lunch interval Alexander substituted Gilchrist. Later, after a meeting of the selectors, Gilchrist was sent home, while the rest of the party proceeded to the next part of the tour, in Pakistan. Alexander broke this news unceremoniously to the malefactor: “You will leave by the next flight. Good afternoon.” Gilchrist never again played for the West Indies. There was lurid gossip that he had pulled a knife on Alexander.

In Pakistan, without Gilchrist, the West Indies lost the first two Tests, before achieving a crushing victory, Pakistan’s first home defeat, in Lahore.

In 1960 Alexander was disappointed to lose at home to England, though he claimed 23 victims behind the stumps in the series, equalling John Waite’s world record for South Africa.

There had been angry riots when the West Indies capitulated in the second Test in Trinidad. The white Jamaican Alexander was not easily forgiven by the crowd, despite holding off the West Indian collapse with a fighting 28, the top score of the innings.

The return of Frank Worrell to the West Indies side — he made 197 not out in the first Test — led CLR James, the editor of Nation, to campaign for Alexander’s replacement as captain. In the upshot, Worrell was chosen to lead the forthcoming tour to Australia.

Alexander accepted the decision in good part, proving a loyal lieutenant to Worrell, a close friend. The dismissed captain had taken over a side in total disarray and laid the foundations for future triumphs. The West Indies had acquired a strong team spirit, while players such as Garry Sobers, Rohan Kanhai, Wes Hall, Lance Gibbs, Conrad Hunte, Joe Solomon and Basil Butcher all blossomed.

Relieved of the cares of leadership, Alexander surprised everyone by becoming extraordinarily prolific with the bat during the tour of Australia in 1960-61. In the Tests his scores were 60, 5, 5, 72, 0, 108, 63, 87 not out, 11 and 73. His century at Sydney, which set up a West Indies win, was the only one of his first-class career. (He had made 99 for Cambridge University against Nottinghamshire in 1953, before hitting a full toss into the hands of mid-on.)

In Australia, Alexander again performed well behind the stumps. Richie Benaud, the Australian captain and a great admirer, remembers how, in the celebrated tied Test in Brisbane, Alexander, facing into the sun, collected Hunte’s throw and hurled himself at the stumps to run out Wally Grout, who was trying to sneak a third and winning run off the penultimate ball.

After that series Alexander retired from cricket, and returned to the West Indies to concentrate on his career as a veterinary surgeon, eventually becoming Chief Veterinary Officer. In his 25 Tests he had scored 961 runs at an average of 30.03, while as wicket keeper he had claimed 85 catches and five stumpings. In his 92 first-class games he made 3,239 runs and averaged 29.18; he held 217 catches and pulled off 39 stumpings.

Gerry Alexander, as the great Australian bowler Alan Davidson has remarked, “upheld all the virtues of cricket”. In 1982 he received Jamaica’s Order of Distinction for his outstanding contribution to sport.

His wife Barbara predeceased him by four weeks; they had two children.